The Winsalute

Look at this bastard:

The other day, I ate a banana as I was getting ready in the morning. Winston was still in bed. When I went into my room to get my shit together, he started sniffing the air. He must have smelled it on my fingers or breath and, evidently, he was pissed that he wasn't invited to share in it because when I walked back into the living room a few minutes later, he was there, sitting on my keyboard looking up at me. I really think he was doing it to spite me. We've run into this problem before. Once, he ended up somehow deleting an entire recap I did for work when I left my computer open overnight. Thank god Wordpress saves every draft individually, otherwise I might be wearing Winston as earmuffs now.

But that's not the point of this post...

The point is that there's this way he loves to sit with right paw extended and left paw tucked that I find totally confusing. It's just one more thing that makes me convinced that this cat isn't a cat at all, but an alien here to, I don't know, eat bananas and poop in bathtubs. An alien here to weird out and annoy. This is his version of the Vulcan salute:

I guess he flipped things around in the last one since he wasn't actually on the computer, potentially destroying my work, so the whole situation was thrown off.

Anyway, I love that this seems to serve no function. Does he figure that if someone comes with a table saw and gets the extended leg, he'll at least have the other one? Does he figure at all?

Bonus shout-out:

A reader named Lesley Robin, who writes the blog Floating Robot, also has an Etsy store, in which she offers little plaques that are made to look like faux-taxidermy rendered in clay. She sent me one of Winston:

1) My former cat Trot always would rip your lips off, or finger, for a french fry. My brother's cat, Rudy, would do the same for a graham cracker. Cat's have weird, personal food fetishes.

2) Cat's always do that tuck paw thing. My cat would tuck both in, like a little Buddha.

3) They love sitting on top of whatever has your attention. If you are playing the piano? Walk across the keys, or lay on the keys. Writing with a fountain pen. Sit there watching then flick your tail across the wet ink. Computers? Lay on the keyboard and start shoving your paw up inside the printer tray.

Oh? I'm sorry. Was I IGNORING YOU????

Winston and his plaque? "You may honor me now." Of COURSE he approves. He's a cat. Bow wow down.

Life is something that in the universe is common, for me there is no doubt that more advance, intelligent life is out there, some may already contacted us, others probably are in other regions of the universe.